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Should we bother about the UN’s International Day of Peace today?

By Andris Heks - posted Tuesday, 21 September 2021


I say absolutely!

Though not everyone agrees.

I tell a mate that I am writing a piece for the UN's International Day of Peace. He shrugs his shoulders saying:

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You are wasting your time. War has always been and will always be. It's human nature. There is nothing that can be done about it.

Really? My mate has not done his fact checks but he is certainly expressing a view that is held by many and one that does not make it easier to keep peace.

Life without war has been a perennial dream of humanity.

Amazingly, over the several hundreds of thousands of years of human history, peace ruled over 99% of the time and warfare was simply unknown.

There were minor tribal skirmishes and individual conflicts but there were no national and world wars until about ten thousand years ago.

Then the world moved from being nomadic, egalitarian and inclusive of people, into a world of 'haves' and 'have nots'.

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As large scale settled societies emerged as a result of the agricultural lifestyles becoming dominant, a clash emerged between nomadic tribes who wanted continued free access to previously common land and the settled societies which took into their possession ever increasing areas of land previously roamed by nomads.

Also within the agricultural societies the classes of rich land owners and impoverished serfs started to emerge.

Land-grabs and the increasing gap between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' provided incentives for war that later was further intensified by toxic nationalism and the tribal mentality of an 'eye for an eye' revenge mentality. Mahatma Ganhdi quipped, that this view taken to its logical conclusion would make the whole world blind.

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About the Author

Andris Heks worked as a Production Assistant and Reporter on 'This Day Tonight', ABC TV's top rating pioneering Current Affairs Program and on 'Four Corners' from 1970 till 1972. His is the author of the play 'Ai Weiwei's Tightrope Act' and many of his articles can be viewed here: https://startsat60.com/author/andris-heks.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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